


Mothers' Defence; Mothers' Absolution

by PaperRevolution



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Backstory, Family, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Loss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-15
Updated: 2013-05-15
Packaged: 2017-12-11 23:44:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,177
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/804618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PaperRevolution/pseuds/PaperRevolution
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Modern AU. The mothers of five friends reflect on the tragic events of one November morning on their lives and those of their children. Companion-fic to "Swerve" written to elaborate on more backstory.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mothers' Defence; Mothers' Absolution

#1: Charlotte Enjolras (1967 – Present Day)

Today, I was buying a newspaper for your dad when I thought I saw you.

There was a young man in front of me in the queue. He had your unruly scrawl of fair hair and your way of standing, very straight, shoulders back. He wasn't as tall as you, but I didn't notice this at first. Shock netted my breath in my throat and my stomach jolted. I wanted so much for it to be you and yet my reaction felt more like horror than elation. It made no sense. Then the boy turned to pick up a packet of mints and his face was rounder than yours, with stubble softening the line of his chin. I let out my breath in a long whoosh and clutched at the edge of the counter for support. If anyone noticed my strange behaviour, they didn't say anything.

Whenever someone loses a child in books or on the television, people just know. You throb with palpable, frenetic grief. The reality is different. I am not marked out by your loss, and I don't know whether that makes things easier or harder. Sometimes I wish for a reason to never leave the house; to stay in bed with the smell of fresh sheets and the sound of rain. Your dad insits that we must get on with things – of course he does.

At first, I wanted to hate you for being so selfish. For rushing off into danger. But it wasn't violence at the demonstration that killed you, because you didn't get there. It was something ordinary, really; something that could have just as easily happened to me. I can't hate you for that. And really, even if I could, perhaps that wouldn't make things any easier, either.

Without your tirades on injustice and apathy, we eat our meals in virtual silence. We are mechanical – your dad clears his plate too quickly; I, far too slowly. Sometimes on an evening I go into your room but do not touch anything. I sit on the edge of the bed and devour everything with my eyes. Your room is so neat – I never had to get at you about cleaning it – but your desk is in a state of disarray. Papers everywhere. I search for traces of you but can find hardly any.

We cannot talk about you. Your dad won't allow it – because he's afraid, I think, of what will overcome him if he does. Guilt, I'd imagine. I don't fool myself into believing that the two of you ever got on well. In this silence, I am terrified, too; frozen rigid. The silence doesn't hold the fear at bay; it's the quiet itself that paralyses me. I'm afraid that if I do not talk about you; if I do not fill my mind with you, I'll forget. Outwardly, I get on with my life ritualistically, without much feeling. Inwardly, I am self-indulgent. I linger over the fact that you did not tell me where you were going that morning; I allow myself to question how well I really knew you. I languish and roil and flounder in this pointless questioning, because of course, it's the only thing I have left.

 

#2: Helen Combeferre (1962 – Present Day)

I was in the kitchen when the phone rang. I remember because I was irritated that it'd interrupted my scrubbing the floor, and now I would have to walk across the wet, newly clean tiles to get to it. I received in bare, economical fragments the vaguest details of what had happened to you. When the line rang shrilly dead I knew two things: that you had been involved in a road accident and that you were in hospital.

Having already known one loss does nothing to protect you from the prospect of another. It only makes the idea more unbearable. I went to pieces right there and then – I ran from the room; stuffed my feet into a pair of shoes; left the house with the front door unlocked. The only thing I took with me was my keys, and only because I needed them to start the car. To this day, I have no idea how I made it to the hospital without getting into an accident myself.

You were dazed, either from pain or from something they'd given you for it. You looked up at me and it was the first time since you were very small that I'd seen you look so afraid. I cried, then, right in front of you. I crumpled and a nurse came and gave me a tissue and said reassuring things to me. You still hadn't said anything to me, but you asked her if your friends were alright. When she wouldn't give you an answer, you seemed agitated and oddly this calmed me. I think it is a mother's instinct to protect the weak, and in your quiet way you have always been so strong. You have never needed me the way your sister did, and so I have never known exactly what to say to you. But suddenly that was different, and now I thought I knew just what to do. I sat beside you and held your undamaged right hand and talked to you. I talked and talked while you drifted vaguely, sometimes watching my face; other times closing your eyes. You had fallen asleep by the time your father arrived, and so I shushed him, hastily.

I would like to be able to say that things changed between us, then. But the next day, you were properly awake and asking incessant questions. When they told you what had happened to the Enjolras' boy, I think you must have wanted to cry but you wouldn't do that in front of me. You are not like me. I was reminded of that, then. You would never need me in the way that I wanted you to. And perhaps I'm selfish in admitting that, but at least I am honest. You protect the child who needs you the most; your youngest, and in overlooking the elder, you make them need you even less. This, I've learnt, is my self-fulfilling prophecy. It isn't anyone's fault.

I tell myself this, and watch you struggle under the weight of the last few weeks, and do nothing. I tell myself it is because this is the way you want it. This is a lie; it is because I am afraid.

 

#3: Rebecca Grantaire (1970 – Present Day)

If I were different, I might have a tendency to blame all of your behaviour on the accident. But I know better than that. Am I too harsh? Maybe I am. Do I push you too hard? Maybe, but that's only because in the past, I have never pushed you hard enough. Ironically, I feel the most guilty about this when you are not here, or when it's night and the house is silent. I will lie there in bed and ask myself: are you doing the right thing? Should you give her more time to grieve? Are you a bad parent, for wanting her to make the best of her life?

I don't think there is such a thing, really, as 'good' and 'bad' parents, generally. Obviously, there's a line, but for the most part, everyone just has different ways of doing things.

I make these excuses to myself and realise that I sound just like you.

The fact is, we are a lot more alike than I care to admit. I drift through life without intent, too, but I tell myself I'm allowed to because I don't have half your natural talent. That's such a partial, mother-ish thing to say, but it's true. You could do so much with your life.

If you want to know the truth, I blame that boy a little for making you the way you are. He was some impossible standard that you, knowing you could never reach, flipped and flopped between clutching desperately for and giving up on altogether. Obviously, I don't know the exact nature of your feelings towards him (when have you ever talked to me about anything like that?) but I think probably you desired him. And desiring him, instead of healing whatever it is in your genetic make-up that makes you such a glass-half-empty sort of girl, only made you worse. I'd got to hoping that now he's gone, this might change, and you might turn a corner. This is ridiculous, I know, and you proved that to me easily enough. You are worse than ever, and I have no idea how to reach you. I try and I try and my attempts fall short. And for the life of me I don't know how it is that I've become so persistent, because like you, I am used to giving up.

 

#4: Grace Prouvaire (1971 – Present Day)

My son, my darling, my only boy, do you know how much you scared me?

I had thought the fear would leave me once I knew you were alright, but it hasn't. It stays with me near-constantly. I worry while you are in school. I worry while you are upstairs in your room. I worry all the time you're not near me, which is a lot, because you're seventeen and what seventeen-year-old boy spends all his time with his parents? And this makes me afraid of suffocating you, because if I force my protection on you, maybe I'll only succeed in pushing you further away.

Of all your friends, they said, you were one of the luckiest. You escaped only with a sprained wrist and a gash in your leg, and when I arrived at the hospital, you were at first too busy fretting over everyone else to notice me. For a few minutes, I watched you quietly. You make quick, fluttering gestures with your hands when you're anxious, you know – you inherited that from me.

In less than a year, you will leave home. You will go to university, maybe Exeter or Durham or Napier, all far away from here. This thought petrifies me. You are almost grown up, and there are a whole wealth of things that could trouble you, none of which I can do anything to stop.

Through no fault of your own, you have made me feel powerless. Don't feel guilty for that; you are only living your life. The thing about being a mother is, you can be selfish and selfless, both at once. I spend most of my time thinking of what's best for you, and in doing so, I think I must ignore the truth of what really is best. I am doing what I can, here, with the hot and panicked sense that although you are fine, I am rapidly failing.

 

#5: Susanna Malory (1974 - 1994)

I wasn't much older than you are now, when you were born, and within a matter of months, I'd left you. The fact that I would've stayed if I could makes little difference, in the end.

You were never meant to happen. My parents were devout Catholics whose opinion on having a child out of wedlock was made pretty clear to me. I suppose this is why they've never made any attempt to see you. But at the time, I didn't think I cared. Eliot had said that he'd stay with us, and that was enough. Now, I wonder why it is that the both of us together were enough for him, but you alone were not. I have to believe that it was fear which made him leave you; that he thought he was giving you up so you could have a better chance. I have to believe that.

He's there now, though, and I wonder what this means for you. I wonder whether he will take care of you. I want to shake him hard and tell him that you are all he has left of me. We are all products of our upbringing, and I know that his absence – and mine – must have printed themselves indelibly on your life.

Even without me there to watch you grow up; to teach you things and laugh with you and probably sometimes yell at you, you have been wonderful and diligent and caring; you have never seemed to resent my not being there. You don't deserve this thing that has happened to you. Not you; never you. Never, never. But these words are useless. If words are useless, does that make this any easier? No, of course it doesn't.

My own parents used to prattle on about the sins of the father. I wonder if that is what you are being punished for – mine and Eliot's sins. I wonder and wonder and cannot stop. I wait for some reassurance, and none comes. Little sharp-faced girl with your father's eyes and my cloud-wisps of sandy-brown hair, do you forgive me? Daughter with your dammed up, clammed up words, I want to be absolved.


End file.
